Again, changing URL Structure

Advice please - Wordpress: url structure, permalinks etc... (website with 6000+ posts) Basically, I don`t believe the website has the best url structure and could do better - albeit that what a pain in the butt changing the permalink structure could/would be (also, is there a way to not lose social sharing of unique urls?).  The site is in Google News and partly due to this the url structure was set /news/%post_id%/%postname%/ A couple of years ago Google News did away with the need to have 3 digits (minimum) in the url url as /news/12345/here-is-the-weekend The `problem` is that the permalink doesn`t include category and the only place that items are listed in a category are on pages in a category archive... The site publishes in these `categories`: news, reviews, interviews, tickets Looking at the top site in this niche - and looking at it logically, and in terms of `siloing` or grouping I believe the best way forward would be to have permalinks as follows... (which I believe would be /%category%/%postname%/ /news/name (is there any need for a number?) /reviews/name-of-review /interviews/name-of-interview /tickets/ But... what then of previous social shares - which would all go to 0 due to different url structure... (is there a plugin that resolves this?) and backlinks all `wrong`, redirect with 301 6000+ posts? or simply redirect those urls with backlinks? Suggestions as to the best way forward in biting this bullet?